Forum for THe Linux Movement

If you have followed my blog from the beginning you may know that I helped set up the forums for the Awn project.

They were a new ajax type of forum that I believe helped get things done with Awn with collaboration. The forums have become very active over at Awn and there a lot of Linux users with a ton of experience hanging around them. I always want to ask them for help with other issues; ones not involvign Awn, but that forum is just meant for Awn...

So I decided to creat a LInux Movement forum, well actually just a general linux forum to get soem support in, or just chit chat abotu linux in. SO without furthure adue here is a link to a new forum based from the readers of The Linux Movement, lets all ban together and help one another.

Forum Link!!

Hardy Alpha 6 thoughts

I have recently upgraded to hardy alpha 6 and so far am very very pleased. One thing I wanted to point out was hard comes with the latest Compiz Fusion and so far it is much stabler and smoother for me then the previous version.

I have not yet run into the black window bug with my nvidia card!!! But I must say I haven't tried to open as many windows as I could yet...actually let me to a small test right now.....

So I just opened 4 firefox windows, pidgin, one chat window and a pdf file, and awn...... and no black window bug!!! Could it be fixed? With the previuse version of compiz fusion I was runnign which came with Feisty I could not open more then 2 firefox windows at a time before gettign the black window bug, this is a significant performance upgrade. It probably has more to do with the latest compiz fusion release and not Hardy, but correct me if I am wrong...

Awn Remember the Milk Applet

Are you juggling a million things you need to complete at once? Well why not use a todo list? The one problem I have had with todo lists, is I want them to be quickly and easily accessible. I never could find one, because I would always need to browse to a website in firefox, which isnt that long, but is a pain when I need a quick glance at what I need to do.

But now there is a super quick and easy todo list usign remeber the milk + Awn!!!! Here is a nice screenshot:


This us a super sweet todo list for Awn, and will definetly help me stay on task. If you want to download it you can grab it here. Just a note you do need an accoudt with Remeber the Milk, but thats really is no big deal. Lastly if you have questions or bugs with the applet or simply want to discuss it, you can chat about it here is this awn forum post.

How do you know scams exist?

So how do you know the internet is full of liars?

Just use linux and surf the internet:


Yea mailware and viruses don't really exist on linux...So I don't' know how they detect them on my machine?

New Compiz Fusion Animations!

OK so they are not exatly out yet, but I am told they are coming out soon. The three new animations are called, helix, blinds, and sandstorm.

There are some preview videos of them on youtube!!! So watch and enjoy:

Sandstorm:





Helix:




Blinds:

Ubuntu Brainstorm!

So first there was Digg. It made social news/voting kind of big. Then there were a million and one spin offs of digg. Dell then took this idea and turned it into Dells' Idea Storm, where users could suggest things for the company.

Now there is Ubuntu taking this idea and doing what Dell did. There now is A Ubuntu website made by Ubuntu called Ubuntu Brainstorm. AT this site you can suggest ideas and vote on ones you like best. It looks liek Ubuntu really wants to know what the community wants in a linux distro.

So right over to Ubuntu Brainstorm, and go help shape the future of Ubuntu!

Ubuntu Awn Curves theme

I created a Ubuntu Awn theme a while back, and now decided I should make a Ubuntu Curve theme for Awn Curves. So here it is:


If you would like to download it, grab it here.


Any questions or help setting it up ask in the comments.

New Comment System (Take 2)

If you have followed this blog for awhile, you may know I got rid of the blogger comment system awhile ago. The new comment system was snazzy, But it seemed to go down a lot and that really bugged me.

So this is a test post to see if the new comments will work. The new comment system will only work on new posts, so we will not loose any valuable hellp from previous comments.

Have fun, and lets get chatty!

A little help please

So basically I am stuck, and am going to ask you, my readers for some help. I have an old IBM thinkpad 600e which I was previously installed and ran Ubuntu on fine, and before that damn small linux. You all probably know I am good at breaking my system and I did it yet again but this time on my laptop.

So I figured I would reinstall ubuntu. I went at it but got errors about not having enough memory for the GDM to start up...what ever that meant. So I downloaded a bootable partition manager an deleted all my old partitions and created one new one, with ext3.

Next I went to try booting into the ubuntu live cd again, but this time got this error:

not syncing: vfs: unable to mount fs on unknown-block(1,0)


If you have any suggestions or ideas, please post them in the comments section. I will update you guys if things get fixed.

Thanks

Awn Launcher (Only)

A lot of people around have been asking for Awn to be only a launcher, and not track tasks....I personally don't see why. But anywho for all you peopel who just want to use Awn as a launcher and nothing else, then you can thank moonbeam. Over at the Awn forum moonbeam made a post saying he has created just this.

I believe if you grab the latest trunk, because you need the vala support then you can try this applet. Any questions about it or bug reports please paste in the forum post.

Thunderbird Awn Plugin

I just started to use thunderbird with my gmail account. I have liked it so much, I am using it now all the time, and not using my online version of gmail. So me being the Awn obsessed man I am, I knew there must be an Awn plug in somewhere. So I searched the Awn forums till I found this post.

Basically this plug in will place messages over the Thunderbird Icon on the dock, notifying you of new mail massages, like so:


I find this plug in very convenient because i do not have to keep un-minimizing Thunderbird to check if I have new messages. Now if you already are a Thunderbird user your probably saying, Thunderbird can give you pop up notifications for when new mail comes in. Well you right, but I turned them off cause they look so ugly. This awn plug in is the much more blingy way to do it!

To grab the plug in you can download it from here. But you need to have an account there because it is in the sandbox section. Also once your account is created you need to go to preferences and enable viewing of sandbox addons.

Intrepid what?

The next Ubuntu version was just given it's name Intrepid Ibex! If your like me when you first heard that you were like, "say what?" So what is exactly is an Ibex you ask? Well this si what it looks like:


Also if you want to know more about the Ibex check out its wikipedia article.

Adobe AIr comming to Linux Soon

Adobe air has only been out for pc and mac computers. Eer since Adobe air came out, it looked like amazing eye candy to me. But it was really meant to bring internet applications to the desktop.

Anywho they have always said, they would eventually release a linux version. All linux users know that adobe has been slow on their releases of flash for linux, and it was a big pain a couple of years ago, not being able to use the latest flash technology. I personally thought adobe would never get around anytiem soo to letting linux users, try adobe air.

Not to get your hopes up with that last sentance, but adobe air is nto out on linux yet...But I have proof they are definetly workign on it. They are going into a tight private beta and need linux users to help test it and report bugs. You can read more about that, and find out how to apply to be a beta tester here.

One last note, if any of you get accepted as beta testers please stop by and keep us posted on how things are looking.

New Admins in the Awn Forum

Since I had the awn forums initially set up, I have been the only one with admin powers. I had been away from the awn project for a little period of time, and now am back, and thought if they needed something done to the forum while I was gone it couldn't have happened. So I of course appointed Neil as an admin along with, malept, gilir, and moonbeam.

So head over to the forums at awn!

Touch Screen plus Compiz!

This is just a nifty video of someone using a touch screen with the 3d effects of compiz fusion or maybe older beryl:

Newspond

Just found another cool website, and its not in beta so you all can go check it out. Its called Newspond, and is I guess kind of like digg and reddit as it is a social news portal.

The main difference with newspond is you don't vote storie sup, it constantly tracks what seems liek a million things to rate how popular a news story of blog post is on the web. The best part is its comment system, its nothing liek I have ever seen before. Its a bit hard to explain so just go check out Newspond your self.

I wish I coudl get that comment system on my blog....

Awn Roadmap

Things on the Awn Road map(In no particular order):

• position awn on any screen edge
• vala applet support
• better configuration support
• non-composite version
• better auto hide
• re-arrange dock by drag and drop
• grouping
• Read about more here
  

Open Office goes For Eye Candy!

Open office has recently been trying to add a little eye candy to there office suite. THey are developing open gl slide transitions for there presentation program. You can get a preview of the transitions in this youtube video.

Awn Updates

I used to keep you guys pretty updated on awn but haven't done so in awhile. If you noticed I have started to come back alive on my blog, because now I am done with all my college things.

So over at awn there are being big strides to get the website going now. There is a easier link to get to the awn forum now to: http://forum.awn-project.org/

I say there are being pushes to get the website out and going but don't make that seem like they are not working on awn itself because it is being actively worked on. And they are many little and big things, going on that I will report more about in later posts.

Ok this was kind of broad But I will be postign lots more soon!

Wuala Invites

I have a few Wuala invites (you can read my post on wuala here). Here is the deal, I will give the first one away for free, to the first person that replies in the comments.

The rest of my invites I will be giving to people who make donations of $5+ to the blog. I am not trying to make, money just want to improve things for the blog, and maybe eventually save up for our own domain!

If you plan on using Wuala on linux make sure you read my post first.

Dell idea storm and Linux

Dell Idea storm was a digg like website built for dell users to make requests toward the company. There website gained lots of attention when users started a topic about making Ubuntu powered dells, and it was because of that post that dell started selling Ubuntu linux computers.

Anyway linux users are at it again on the dell idea storm website. Now they are calling for tell to sell Ubuntu linux computers at stores! So if you would liek to support this idea go vote it up here.

Screenlets without Composite!

Could it be true!! Could someone with out compiz fusion or xcompmgr actually run screenlets? Well apparently it is true! 

A new version of screenlets came out revision 0.0.12 final rev 174

In tis version there are new screenlets, lots of bug fixes and optimized code, along with non composite support!

Well at least that is everything that is advertised. I am on a mac now, so can't test it but will by tomorrow. If you want to try it yourself you can grab the deb from here.

If you try it before me please leave us some comments and share your experiences, until then I will post again whit my findings later!

Have Fun!

Ad Space Available

In an effort to increase this blogs worth I am going to be offering add space, for anyone to advertise there own blog, website, products (i.e. Ebay auctions etc.).

Prices for advertising will vary from $2 to $30 depending on the plan. The plans will range from weekly to permanent add placement. This will allow someone with a small website or blog to be featured, for maybe just a week to boost traffic or get your name out etc.

If you are interested in advertising pricing and plans please feel free to fill out this for here.

The Best Linux gmail Checker

The best Linux gmail checker is named CheckGmail. Now why am I raving about a gmail mail checker? You ask, how different can it be from the other gmail checkers, because don't they all do the same thing, notify you when you get mail?

Well yes this notifies you of new gmail message with a pop up like most do. But it also allows you to interact with the new mail without having to visit your inbox! That one little thing is so convenient its great! Look at the screen shot below for explanation on how it works:


AS you can see in the above image, it shows the Subject of the email, and also a quick snippet of text from the email. Then there are a bunch of buttons in red between the subject and the snippet of text. The read; Open, Mark as read, archive, Report spam, and Delete. These are great because you can delete archive etc. all from here and not even havign to open up a Firefox window and go into gmail. yes it sa small feature but its worth its weight in gold for me!

Wuala Free Online storage

This is a wonderful new online storage idea that works on windows, mac, and linux!!! Why else would I report about it, if it did not work on Linux. Anywho how it work is it connect to everyone on the network, and you can give part of your hard drive to the network to share files on. Well to use this you do not need to give any space on your computer, and you will be given 1g of free space with unlimited file size upload (I am pretty sure, haven't tested that yet though).

If my explanation wasn't good enough then you can read wuals' here.

Unfortunately it is in private beta, so you all just can't join yet. Between steamy and this I have good luck with getting into these.

I would like to point out I have it working for myself only partly. I have full access to the free on gig of online storage which is great. But you can get more if you share part of your hard drive space. Unfortunately to be able to this is pretty tricky and you need to have knowledge with router things and ip addresses and UPnP.

Instand Bird Chat

There is a new Chat client on the block! Its called Instant Bird. It is based on Mozilla and Pidgin. I gave it a try and so, far its pretty basic, and can not I believe compete with Pidgin or Kopete on Linux.

But on the upside, it seems to have the same theme and exstenion manager as Firefox does. I mean there interfaces look exactly the same. What could this mean? Well maybe that this will be super easy to theme and extend with extensions. And anyone who has read my blog for a while knows that I hate how you can't easily theme Pidgin...

ANywho if you want to check this out its here.

Ubuntu Tweak

This is a nice little program that can help you easily and quickly tweak some little things in Ubuntu which aren't easily changeable normally. Check it out here.

Pandora Screenlet

Ok I know I have been gone awhile, my computer was very badly messed up and i had like 3 different version of Linux on it it was like a tri booter. Anywho I re-installed for liek the millionth time, and will try my hardest not to mess things up too badly....

So I got Compiz working great again so I decided to go grab some screenlets. I am a big user of www.pandora.com so thought a screenlet for that could be awesome.

So I found one here: